Stay on target

It’s always nice when The X-Files can actually surprise us. In its 11th season, we know how this show works by now. There are Monster of the Week episodes, and there are Mythology episodes. The Mythologies noticeably suffered after the show’s original driving mystery was solved. They never really recovered. Not during the show’s original run, and certainly not in these revival event seasons. The Monsters of the Week, were always a little hit and miss, but the promise of a new monster was enough to make us feel like they were better episodes on the whole. We come to The X-Files to be scared by the creatures Chris Carter and co. cook up, after all. Last night’s episode did something new. It disguised itself as a Monster of the Week, then slowly morphed into a mythology. It used its own story structure to tell us we couldn’t trust what we saw.

At the start, two girls are independently exploring a rusty, abandoned old ship, which seems like the absolute most brilliant idea. A brief shock scare of a dead animal being eaten by maggots sets the atmosphere of the scene well. It’s an episode all about paranoia, and this opening scene lets you know exactly what you’re in for. The girls barely miss each other, but they know someone else is on board. They talk to each other, slowly becoming convinced that the other is a monster called Ghouli. When they finally do come face to face, they see each other as the Ghouli – and eldritch, Lovecraftian horror with a shark’s head and sharp tentacles. The effect is a little rubbery, but that doesn’t make it any less, um, effective. This is the kind of creature horror I’ve been missing from this season so far.

Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny (Cr: Shane Harvey/FOX)

It doesn’t last long. After the credits, we join Scully, who’s telling Mulder about a strange nightmare she’s been having. She wakes up in a strange bed with a dark figure behind her. She chases after the figure, which leads her to a snowglobe containing a model of the ship those girls were exploring when they attacked each other. An atmosphere of paranoia hangs over the entire episode. Mulder and Scully are followed from the airport to the crime scene. Once there, Scully sees a strange man standing on the dock, watching her. The episode never lets you feel like you’ve got a firm hold on what’s happening. It constantly reminds you that you can’t trust what you see. The creep factor continues when Mulder and Scully find out that both girls were dating the same guy: Jackson Van De Kamp, who is actually Mulder and Scully’s son, William.

Scully becomes convinced that giving up William for adoption led him to commit a murder-suicide, and man was what came next heartbreaking. It’s no secret that Gillian Anderson is a phenomenal actress, but she really brought it in this monologue. She cries over his body, apologizing for giving him up, wishing she had done things differently. It’s so good; it doesn’t even matter that it’s all a projection. William isn’t actually dead. As soon as Mulder and Scully leave the morgue to conduct a DNA test and confirm William’s identity, he gets up. William can project images into peoples’ heads. He made Mulder, Scully and the police see a hole in his head. It’s at this point you realize that this is a mythology episode. Department of Defense agents were trying to kill William to cover up a conspiracy. A conspiracy involving the creation of alien hybrids and secretly injecting people with alien DNA. Skinner, at Smoking Man’s request tries to scare Mulder off the case, but he should know by now that’s not how Mulder works. You tell him to drop something, it only makes him more determined to find the truth.

David Duchovny and Mitch Pileggi (Cr: Shane Harvey/FOX)

The DoD agents were the ones who killed William/Jackson’s adopted parents, trying to cover up their role in the conspiracy. They staged the bodies to make it look like a suicide. They might have killed William, had Mulder and Scully not arrived and started breaking down the door. William returns to the hospital to apologize to his girlfriends. Ghouli was meant to be a prank. He wrote all those stories on the internet about it. He’s the one that made them see each other as the monster. He thought they would run away, not attack. Unfortunately, his two-timing ways come back to bite him. One of the girls sees him kissing the other, and sends the pictures to the police… for some reason. This is the one part of the episode that really doesn’t work. It may be one of the better mythology episodes we’ve seen in a while, but this really doesn’t make any sense. She’s completely unaware that people are trying to kill Jackson, but she knows a photo of him will get the cops on his tail? It’s never explained, and the episode just moves on to his escape. With DoD agents flooding the halls of the hospital, he uses his powers to make them see each other as a threat. It is satisfying to watch these goons kill each other. And at least we got to see the monster again.

I really do wish more was done with the monster, as it is a really nice-looking effect. I really was hoping for it to be a one-off monster of the week episode. Mostly because the idea of a monster that tricks people into killing each other is interesting and scary. It could make for a great standalone X-Files. And then there are the way the show transitions from a monster story into the mythology. It’s just awkward. We haven’t seen enough of Mulder and Scully’s baby to know that much about him. When Scully is crying over his body… yes, it’s an emotionally effective scene, but Anderson has to do a lot of the heavy lifting herself. The story did hardly any work before that point. Even as they headed to the morgue, I was wasn’t entirely sure if Jackson/William was actually their son or why the show wanted us to be this sad about his potential death. I guess a great actor really can make up for a script’s shortcomings.

Gillian Anderson (Cr: Shane Harvey/FOX)

Despite some hiccups in the transition, this turned into the best mythology episode we’ve seen in a long time. That’s probably because it doesn’t try to get too deep into things. William is still giving Scully visions of the UFO on the 14th Street bridge, and now he’s on the run to California. We still don’t know that much about William as a character. And honestly, what we do know is that he’s kind of a dick. He’s reading a pick-up artist book and playing mean pranks on his girlfriends. But those actions are at least a little understandable coming from a teenage boy with no sense of his own identity. He was always going to lash out somehow. The episode really punches us in the heart with its last scene. Mulder and Scully pull over at a gas station, where Scully strikes up a conversation with a strange man she first met at the hospital. He says he never finished high school, and ends the conversation with a quote from Malcolm X. Whom William had a poster of in his bedroom. One check of the gas station’s security footage later, and the truth is revealed. That was William, disguising himself so he can say goodbye to his mom. “I wish I knew you better.” The X-Files can still tug at our emotions when it wants to.